A spot to highlight my Triton sailboat, her sailing adventures and restoration challenges. For those of you smart enough to run from a total 'gut-job' restoration but like to follow the miseries of those less wise, I hope I can provide you with some entertainment.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

I actually bought he windvane five years ago back when I thought the project would take a year or two. For the past five years the box has been cluttering up my work space in the basement and I am very happy to get it out of there.

I chose the Monitor for its great reputation both for quality and customer service. I can attest to both of those attributes. The quality is top notch and my dealings with the company have been very professional and helpful. Yes, the Monitor is quite expensive. I paid just over $5k for mine. But to see this machine is to understand why it is so expensive. It is absolutely gorgeous. The vane is a very well built piece of machinery and the mounting is all custom manufactured for the individual boat.

The first step is to fill out a form with a bunch of measurements and angles for my particular boat. The company had a couple of drawings from previous installations on other Tritons and using my measurements, the company engineer recomended one of the drawings for my application. Since the drawings are freely available on the web I don't think they will mind if I re-post it here:

The first step in the installation process was to install the deck mounts for the upper mount tubes. I immediately ran into a problem.

The aft deck hatch that I had installed interferred with the mounting pads. After a moment of considering grinding the deck flat and the necesary layers of fiberglass repairs I remembered that I still had some pre-made polyester based sheet material. I still don't know why I had it in 3/8 inch thickness but that is exactly what I needed to create a level surface for the mounting pads. Some quick cutting and more artistic grinding and I had my custom fitted filler blocks.

And then being very careful to space the mounts equally apart from the centerline I drilled the mounting holes. Note: there is a slight difference between the port and starboard shape of the stern - the port filler block is half an inch shorter. With the mounts temporarily fixed in place I moved onto the next step.

The mount for the Triton is a bit non-standard with the top tube mounting on the deck rather than the transom. The special instructions for this deck mounting that come with the kit (the kit instructions are fabulous overall) say to drill two holes in the tube for a through bolt. The through bolt secures the upper tube to the deck mounting pads. This is where I ran into a bigger problem. The holes need to be perfectly perpendicular to the pre-formed bend in the upper tube. When the holes are even slightly off...

The results look like this. The tube is turned slightly inwards. This event made me a very unhappy camper. The instructions suggest installing the windvane with the boat in the water to fine tune the height adjustments and infer that only basic handtools are needed to install the windvane. That might be true with a standard mount but this deck mounted tube proved to be too tricky for me working in a boatyard on a sawhorse with handheld drill motor. Maybe it is just me. After all the most complex stuff I do at work is re-build crashed airplanes and fabricating new parts to replace the damaged ones... It must be just me because the instructions suggest it is pretty easy to do on the dock with the boat in the water.

Anyway, my plan is to take the tubes into work where I have nice jigs and stationary drill presses that can accurately drill my holes. To fix my error I had to cut off about an inch of the tubing. This will lower the whole mount about half an inch which I think will be acceptable. If I am wrong then I might have to order new tubes to replace the one I ruined with the bad holes. If I do have to order them maybe I can get the factory to drill those holes for me too...

So, while I am overall very very pleased with my Monitor windvane to date, I was a little dissapointed with this particular stage of assembly. At this point in the day I broke off and sanded the cabin sole and applied another coat of urethane.

3 comments:

I've been drooling over the Cape Horn windvane and reading through their installation instructions just for kicks. I gotta admit that there's quite a bit of pucker factor in simply contemplating such an installation. Looks like much the same deal with the Monitor. Good luck with the rest of the installation - hope it doesn't end up costing yet more boat units!

The Cape Horn is a great choice too in my opinion. I wouldn't be afraid of the installation. It isn't terribly difficult it just takes some time and the occasional head scratching. I fully expect the joy of a windvane to remain long after the headache of the installation is gone.

I have no doubt about costing me more boat units. It ALWAYS does. Its expected and I would be a little dissapointed if it didn't happen at this point :-)

I had a Pearson Triton for 21 years (hull #146, Sundown), and I mounted a Monitor on it while it was in the water. The trick is to hang the whole unit--vane, mounting tubes and brackets--off the transom using the stern pulpit and ropes. Then use scrap wood and c-clamps and duct tape to hold it precisely where you need it. THEN drill the holes into the boat. By far the hardest part will be figuring out where the water line will be. I cruised Mexico with another triton as a buddy boat, and we had radically different waterlines, because I had way more junk aboard. But how can you possibly figure where your waterline is going to be until get the boat fully loaded for cruising. It's almost worth it to wait until the boat's in the water and loaded down with cruising stuff. I had to paint the waterline up during two consecutive haul outs too...

I just scanned all the old photos of my cruise to Mexico and I'm going to be putting together a blog on it. I'll send you the address when I have it up and running. And I can answer any questions you may have about the Triton. My email is billinch@hotmail.com